Why Rage And Final Fantasy XIII Were Bad Games

Is bad the right word to use? Perhaps. It’s definitely the easiest in a pinch, especially when you’re finding difficulty placing such games. It certainly isn’t too harsh of a criticism while remaining on the side of judgement that you’d like to place the games in question, wherein you are in fact saying the following: They’re shit.

Having recently played Rage, I can at least speak for one of these games with headstrong assurance, where the other would rely more on what little exposure I’ve had as well as word of mouth from those friends of mine whose opinions I trust, who have in fact played it. It being Final Fantasy XIII. But let’s talk about Rage for a moment, shall we?

Rage honestly depresses me. It’s got good production values and you can see that a decent amount of work has been put into it, but at the end of the day the flaws are too glaringly apparent and they’re not even justifiable from a developer of iD Sofware’s calibre. I can definitely see what they were going for with Rage. I see what they did there, if I may say it like that. The game is a mix of Borderlands and Fallout 3, and on paper that should be a great thing but in execution it falls flat on its face in a big way.

It’s boring, unimaginative and generic. And from the guys who brought us Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein.

The one redeeming quality of the game according to many I’ve spoken to is the character animation and how the game treats the player as if they are an actual physical entity in the game, bobbing the camera as the player walks and so on. But even then that’s not saying much and after a few hours, I saw that those amazing character animations with regards to the ways enemies reacted to getting shot were repeating. So there weren’t even that many in the first place.

Nothing in the game excited me. Not the story, nor the weapons, nor the enemies, nor the open world. The races were almost a welcome distraction when they were being fair and not forcing you to restart them for a billionth fucking time because some douche shot a lucky rocket at you as you approached a rally point.

In any case, while playing through Rage I was trying to figure out why the game released in as buggy a state as it was (a good few missions forced reloads because the game would glitch out entirely) and was so difficult to enjoy, and the realisation came to me like a bullet to the head. If you remember trailers leading up to the game, most of them were developer diaries or demonstrations of such things as the game’s lighting system, the character animations and the open world. From day one iD marketed this game’s engine, the iD Tech 5, more than they ever marketed the game.

Rage is in fact a glorified tech demo. Not a game. It doesn’t have enough fun factor to be a game. It’s just a bunch of benchmarks developed in order to demonstrate the game’s engine, which isn’t even a good engine in the first place.

Let’s disregard all the invisible barriers that blocked progression and forced reloads for a moment. The game had the most obscene texture pop-in you have ever seen, and this in a time when Unreal Engine 3 is everywhere. Stop your character for a moment, then spin the camera around and back to where you were facing. Watch everything suddenly lose all clarity before becoming detailed again many seconds later. How is such horrid texture pop-in even allowed in a game from 2011? Then there were the other issues, such as the delayed audio which played sounds moments after I witnessed them in-game, as if I was Skype-calling someone on a laggy internet connection. Extremely jarring when you’ve fired a weapon and not heard it go off until a few seconds later. And why, praytell, were there just three characters in the game, with the rest mere copies of those? Was it really so difficult to draw up a few more character models for the game on their brand new ridiculously shit engine?

That’s the problem with Rage, and according to what friends have told me, Final Fantasy XIII as well. The games exist in their current guise only to show off their respective engines. Basically they’re there for developers to get themselves off to the graphics while everything else falls by the wayside. And while they’re masturbating over how good their game looks, they forget that a game must be entertaining and fun and not a chore to play.

Rage made me depressed to play. I was never quite so happy to finish a game just so I could be done with it, as I was when I finished Rage. And what a horrid anti-conclusion that ending was, yes, people who’ve played Rage?

Easily my most disappointing game of 2011.

Final Fantasy XIII certainly wasn’t as bad, although the twenty hour linear path it initially followed was heavily criticised as well as the verbose nature of the story, but it was pretty much universally agreed that the game looked amazing for all that it lacked in other areas. Same concept, isn’t it?

One other game that must bear mention is Crysis 2, which was basically Crytek’s console debut and how they stamped their graphical prowess on the once ‘next-gen’ machines where other games had tried and failed. I’m not sure whether CryEngine 3, CD Projekt’s RED Engine or DICE’s Frostbite 2 takes the cake for most beautiful and I don’t particularly care, the point is that Crysis 2 was itself developed as an exhibition of the developer’s ability to create graphical powerhouses on consoles. To assert their dominance as a developer of really good looking games. And I can’t fault them for that because I kind of enjoyed what parts of Crysis 2 I’ve played — and I do plan to finish it eventually so maybe expect more words if I end up hating it.

Bad games exist for a myriad reasons. They could be rushed, badly planned, badly implemented, badly designed or just a result of developers choking on their own hubris. Sometimes though, they could be the result of developers trying not to make games in the first place, but to sell their engines. And why not? Epic must make a lot of money from just licensing their Unreal Engine 3 for all and sundry to develop on. Unfortunately when you fail this hard at showing off an engine, it only works to harm you. What happened to the days of Doom 3, iD?

After my own heart Cavie :-) god damn I hated rage. I wanted to love it so badly. I really wanted to play something like borderlands or fallout.

I already disliked the game within minutes of playing. Like you say, the most irritating thing is realising that everything you’re doing is just a tech demo. Then the most ridiculous part is that the games tech is broken to the point of being laughable. I would have probably given rage much more of a chance if it wasn’t a buggy mess.

Game was so broken when I bought it. Has made me not want to play it at all.

http://egamer.co.za/author/cavie Caveshen “CaViE” Rajman

And the cover blasts you with exactly that. “From the makers of Quake and Doom.” Okay, so that’s going to make me cream my pants and buy your game and love it always?

Greatwyt

i cant say much for Rage, but Final Fantasy XIII….. uh, what a horrible ‘game’ it was more like watching a movie where you had to walk from one cut scene to another. i liked the combat mechanics, but there was so little combat! i ended up reading a book through the cut scenes and not knowing what was going on. eventually just ignored the game

CataclysmicDawn

That’s why I enjoyed a game like, for example, Saint’s Row 2.

It wasn’t revolutionary when I got it, the graphics were kinda shitty, and it was a straight up GTA clone, but in not focusing on its presentation, the devs made the game an obscene amount more times more enjoyable than GTA IV had ever been for me.

Seen glimpses of Rage, and it looks dead. That was all it was to me.

And I HATED Crysis 2, for all its fantastic graphics, it was an insanely dull and unenjoyable excuse of a game.

http://egamer.co.za/author/cavie Caveshen “CaViE” Rajman

Saints Row 2 knew what it was from the beginning and set out to accomplish that. Rage… well, perhaps iD can tell us what they were trying to do, if not demonstrate their engine.

CataclysmicDawn

See, but iD focused too much on showcasing their engine that they let the values of making a good, enjoyable game fly out the window, whereas with SR2, the presentation wasn’t the greatest, but the game was incredible fun, unlike GTA IV, which again focused too much on graphics and creating a realistic world that it forgot to be fun, like San Andreas was.

http://egamer.co.za/ Azhar Amien

Agreed 100% on Saints Row 2. One of the best sandbox games for me. Agreed 300% on Rage. It started out so well, and then an hour in…two hours in…three, you realise NOTHING has changed. The game remains exactly, to the letter, the same. It’s empty.

I 100000000% agree with Crysis 2. Rubbish game in comparison to the original. It was just a tech demo, and not even a great one at that. The game hardly impressed me on PC, looked average on consoles, and it had restricted, boring gameplay.

Vampiric

bad games? try bad article

Scampii

What?! Did you really play the game! Ok I found Rage was too easy on normal after playing an hour so knocked it up to hard. It felt satisfyingly better. And the graphics are one of the sharpest and best I’ve seen this gen despite the texture pop up. The game itself was refreshing. The game is simply fun! Popping baddies with head shots, blasting grenade rounds to take out hard grunts is just fun!!! And the endings great… Left me wanting a sequel. Some of the later levels are simply gorgeous to look at and this is one game I can sit down, relax, shoot every mofo coming my way and get wowed at the world. Do wish ID expand on this and make a RPG type FPS sequel.

Jerry Curlan

I’m not sure why it seems to be so de rigueur to hate on RAGE – I thought it was pretty damn good. I think the problem most people have with it were their own preconceptions about it. If you went in without any, like I did, what you’ll find is an enjoyable romp around the wasteland. The controls in this game felt so smooth & accurate, they are literally unlike any other game I’ve ever played. If they ever decide to do a sequel (which the haters likely have made unthinkable) I’d be in.

http://egamer.co.za/author/cavie Caveshen “CaViE” Rajman

There is a sequel planned, and like you I also went in with absolutely no preconceptions, I assure you. I am not one of those people who hates a game before ever playing it. I wanted Rage to be good and I spent most of the game hopeful that it would begin to get good, but for me it never did. And I played it on Nightmare difficulty if that matters at all (the commenter you replied to seemed to think difficulty matters, although I didn’t mention it anywhere).

VinGaSar

I have been a huge FF fan for many years and have played every game that has come out on ps1, ps2, DS, PSP… even the remakes. FFXIII was confusing, boring, and unimaginative. Very big disappointment for me.

Rage, on the other hand, was not as bad of a game as you make it out to be. An opinion is an opinion and everyone is entitled to one, but it seems like you were looking for godlike and all you got was just ok.

It was solid fun and I never once experienced any of these issues/glitches that you describe… and I played it through twice so I could play through the nightmare mode (which you can select right away and I should have because even on nightmare, I found it a bit too easy). Rage is a solid game that was fun to play. Maybe the story was half-hearted, perhaps the character animations were recycled, yada yada yada…. If you paid 60 bucks for it, then maybe it wasn’t quite worth it, but I only paid 20 for it and it was a well spent 20 bucks. So many games fall short of expectations but it doesn’t mean they are bad games. In my opinion, Rage is not a bad game.

http://twitter.com/MGTHABO Marko Swanepoel

Rage was horrifically boring for me. I played it, was impressed for the first hour because of the graphics and the AI behaviour, but after that I just wanted to kill myself. I was trudging through the game and just hoping I would see the end soon. I’m a big lover of achievements, but when I played the game all I could care about was finishing it and moving on to something else. It felt like a chore to play and that’s not why we play games huh?

With all that in mind I know why some people love it. I can see the appeal. I just don’t like it.

FF XIII has the opposite effect. I liked it a lot, but I can see why people hate it. I know both ends of the spectrum. Maybe it’s because I played so many JRPG’s in my life that I became more tolerable of some of the faults expressed.

Don’t go raging (ha) and say that these games were amazing and fuck you if you think otherwise. People hated them for a reason, not just because LOL. I personally played both games to the end and I know what the hell I’m talking about. You can’t force the feelings I had out of me and someone can’t force those feelings out of you.

I do resent the people that have played the games for an hour or so and flogged them on a pile to collect dust. Just play them and see if they grow on you. I was hoping that would happen in Rage, but it didn’t. Really helped me get some sleep in though.